RIDLEY TWP. — When Ronnie Leraris turned the corner Friday night, he was unstoppable.
The senior running back accumulated 229 yards on 16 carries and scored five touchdowns to lead Garnet Valley to a 42-28 win over Ridley at Phil Marion Field.
After trailing 21-7 with 3:33 to go before halftime, the Jaguars (1-1, 1-0 Central League) scored six of the game’s final seven touchdowns.
“We ran the right plays in the second half,” Leraris said, “and we executed.”
Dean Koehler, who played a huge role in the defensive secondary, smirked as Leraris uttered those words.
“Well, Ronnie is that fast,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to tackle him.”
Ridley found out the hard way in its opener.
“I give love to the O-line and the perimeter receivers and the slot back,” Leraris said. “They blocked their (tails) off tonight and that helped me a lot.”
Garnet Valley was staring at an almost unfathomable 0-2 start to the season after a loss to Central Bucks West last week. The Green Raiders went up by two touchdowns in the second quarter. It was the combination of quarterback Ryan Carroll and wide receiver Khameen Powell that presented all sorts of challenges for the GV defense. Powell had touchdown catches of 41 and four yards. He would’ve had a third in the opening half had the senior not dropped a wide open pass in the end zone.
The Jags were lucky to be down by only 14 points when the offense went to work late in the second period. Speedy wide receiver Kai Lopez ran a seam route and was left all alone. Quarterback Luke O’Donoghue, who got the start in place of injured Tyler Lassik, made a perfect throw and Lopez ran to the end zone untouched, trimming the Ridley lead to 21-14 with 2:04 left in the half.
“I think the thing with us is we know that, no matter what happens, we always have each other’s back,” said Koehler, who had one of two interceptions of Carroll in the second half. “Other teams, when they start going down, they start yelling at each other. But with us no matter what happens, good or bad, we’ve always got each other’s back and I think that’s what separates us from every other team.”
One of Leraris’ five TDs was a 40-yard pass from O’Donoghue in the first quarter. Head coach Eric Van Wyk noted that the offense had gone nearly six quarters to begin the season without scoring a rushing touchdown. The Jags fixed that in a hurry and wound up amassing 369 yards rushing at 8.6 yards per carry. Koehler checked in with 83 yards. O’Donoghue finished with 48.
“I think it’s kind of a crazy thought, going almost six quarters without a rushing touchdown,” Van Wyk said. “I think what changed tonight was the guys up front. That was the big challenge. We really challenged them this week in practice, both the offensive and defensive lines. As the game went on we really built that up. We’ve been trying to figure out who’s going to be the guy who steps up and tonight it was Ronnie. We knew we had to try to get him in open space and we finally got that going.”
Garnet Valley’s defense did a better job after halftime of pressuring Carroll in the backfield. The junior threw for 237 yards but was 10 of 17 for 108 yards and two picks after halftime. Aidan Bento, Massimo Iavarone and Max D’Antonio helped lead the effort on the defensive line. Junior linebacker Chase Britton sacked Carroll in the end zone for a safety early in the fourth quarter to extend GV’s advantage to 35-21.
“I give a lot of credit to our D-line and our backers making plays in the backfield,” Van Wyk said. “That was because our D-linemen were plugging holes. It was a real collective effort.”
Leraris had three touchdown runs of at least 52 yards after intermission. It seemed to come on the exact same play. Leraris received a pitch and found the edge each time, sprinting down the sideline untouched. Ridley’s defense had no answers.
“Same thing that happened here two years ago: they took over the game in the second half,” Ridley coach Dave Wood said, referencing the 65-37 win by the Jags in 2021 in which it trailed at halftime. “When you look at the first half, we had two drops that were wide-open passes. We had two blown coverages that were horrible on our end. In my mind the score should’ve been about 28-0 and then in the second half, they took over.
“That’s been my fear this year. We don’t have a varsity player that has taken a varsity snap on the O-line and D-line before tonight. We got away with that a little bit in the first half, and I thought we were pretty aggressive, but against that team you’ve got to take advantage and put them away. Two years ago, the same thing happened and we left points on the table and as you see it comes back in the third quarter and it bites us.”
